Microsoft plans to push out a bumper crop of 16 bulletins - four critical - as part of the October edition of Patch Tuesday next week. The updates represent Microsoft's largest ever Patch Tuesday.

The patches will collectively grapple with 49 vulnerabilities. The four critical bulletins impact all supported versions of Windows including Windows 7 and 2008R2.

One of the bulletins will offer a critical update for Internet Explorer, and needs to be applied to versions 6, 7 and 8.

Two less serious updates cover Microsoft Office updates. "Each vulnerability is rated with a severity of 'Important', which is Microsoft's standard rating for file format vulnerabilities, as they require user interaction to be triggered," notes patch management and security scanning services firm Qualys. "For the first time the new Microsoft Word 2010 is included in an advisory."